


salvage the hurt

by Noblebutch (kamrynwhowanders)



Category: Original Work
Genre: "graphic depictions of violence" is tagged for beating, Aftercare, BDSM, Biting, Bruises, Dom/sub, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Impact Play, Kink Negotiation, Marking, Mentions of self-loathing, Off-screen Trauma, PWP without Porn, Praise Kink, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, S&M, Xenophilia, but "no archive warnings apply" is ticked bc its consensual, nonsexual kink, off-screen violence, oh yeah hes a monster boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:34:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23957752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamrynwhowanders/pseuds/Noblebutch
Summary: “Hurt me,” Harlow requests, raggedly, and he’s a paper doll stretched taut over a hurricane, his eyes dark and wet, his lips parted delicately, teasing at the abyss he holds in his needle-teeth. There’s blood on his hands, soaked up to his elbows. He’s a beautiful monster. His words curl hotly under Zinnia’s ribs, and she has to take a moment to breathe, rock back on her heels, hooking her thumbs casually through her belt loops.“Okay,” she decides, impulsively, and Harlow’s face registers surprise, and then a kind of bone-deep relief. He closes his eyes, visibly bracing, and tremors with the suppression of a flinch when Zinnia touches his cheek, a gentleness he does not expect nor, judging by his wild expression, want. “Do you want to be tied up?” she asks, and suppresses a smile at his visible confusion. She knows what the answer is going to be before she asks, but she likes to watch his face. “Or do you want to hold still for me and prove you can be good?”***A deeply traumatized living weapon of shadow and blade comes to the golden lady knight who is his moral compass and his grounding anchor, and asks her to hurt him so he'll feel real. She obliges.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Non-Human Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	salvage the hurt

**Author's Note:**

> these are some OCs from a novel i keep trying and failing to write, because literally all I want to write about is Harlow getting tenderly dommed to hell by a ferocious lady knight, and it turns out that in order to write a novel, you need things like "plot" and "worldbuilding."
> 
> he's a good boy.

“Hurt me,” Harlow requests, raggedly, and he’s a paper doll stretched taut over a hurricane, his eyes dark and wet, his lips parted delicately, teasing at the abyss he holds in his needle-teeth. There’s blood on his hands, soaked up to his elbows. He’s a beautiful monster. His words curl hotly under Zinnia’s ribs, and she has to take a moment to breathe, rock back on her heels, hooking her thumbs casually through her belt loops. 

“Okay,” she decides, impulsively, and Harlow’s face registers surprise, and then a kind of bone-deep relief. He closes his eyes, visibly bracing, and tremors with the suppression of a flinch when Zinnia touches his cheek, a gentleness he does not expect nor, judging by his wild expression, want. “Do you want to be tied up?” she asks, and suppresses a smile at his visible confusion. She knows what the answer is going to be before she asks, but she likes to watch his face. “Or do you want to hold still for me and prove you can be good?”

Harlow’s ink-black tongue flicks out over his pale lips, and he makes a small, hungry sound in his throat. The second, then, of course, and Zinnia smiles. 

“Okay. Do you want something thuddy or something sharp?” 

Harlow’s eyes flicker. “It does not. Matter. What I want.”

Oh, so that’s how he wants to play it, huh? Cute. She nods, and says, “I’ll give you what I want to give you, then. Alright. How much damage do you want? What intensity level?”

Harlow’s quick answer is, “However much you want me to have,” and he’s learning, clearly, and just as clearly wants the questions to be over, wants to be hurt. Zinnia’s mouth is dry, fire singing in her blood, and she can feel herself settling into the calm deliberation of taming something wild and delicate in her hands. 

“Last question for the moment. You want me to hurt you now?” she asks, softly. “Here? Or do you want me to take you to my room?”

Harlow hesitates, at this, and she watches him, distant and even and full of burning tenderness. When he doesn’t answer, she steps a little closer, into his space. 

“I’m going to take you to my room,” she decides, and he concedes without question, bowing his head. She places one broad hand on the small of his back, (his spine is prominent, sharp at every vertebrae, and his skin ripples oddly under her palm) and every muscle in his body tenses. When she guides him in the right direction, he resists for a moment, and then gives in, in a whoosh of soundless air, leaning into her hands and accepting her guidance. He’s so beautiful, trembling gently, his eyes glossed over with black, shadowy tendrils curling off his skin like smoke. She’s going to take him apart. 

When he’s safely in her room, she lets him go, turns to lock the door. When she turns back he’s standing right where she put him, head down, breathing shallow and slow. He’s taut like a bowstring, shuddering like he’s not aware he’s doing it, and when she touches his arm he flinches like it burns him. He’s probably not in a good headspace to be doing this, but Harlow’s never in a good headspace about anything, and like hell is she going to deny him something he wants without a good reason, so she’ll just have to be careful with him. 

“Last thing: I am going to give you a word. You’ll use it if it becomes too much for you or if you need things to stop for any reason. If you say that word, I will stop everything immediately. I expect you to use it if you’re really getting damaged, physically or emotionally, and if you don’t, I’ll never do this for you again, are we clear?”

Harlow’s shoulders draw in, eyes narrowing. His shadow spikes to the rhythm of a heartbeat. “I don’t need it. I can handle whatever you do to me.”

“Non-negotiable. The word is “red.” If I don’t do anything bad enough to hurt you, then you won’t need to use it, but if you need to use it and you don’t, I will know, and I will be _pissed_. Do you understand me?”

Harlow inclines his head in sharp, cold agreement, clearly not happy. He’s such an awful boy, grand and terrible, a walking wound. She can almost see his thoughts behind his smooth, pale mask of a face, read them in the cracked smoke of his tendrils. This isn’t what he wanted, is it? He wanted the fantasy. He wanted the punishment, the suffering, to be vindicated in blood and torment, to be kicked until he fell down and then left to curl in on himself and feel like a real boy made of meat. He didn’t want this to be a whole _thing._

“Take your shirt off,” Zinnia says, and the order comes out so fond and exasperated she can see it itch at him. He obeys, though, mechanically. Pulls the loose, long dark shirt over his head. Drops it on the ground. Stands still, bare from the waist up. 

Zinnia picks the shirt up off the ground and folds it neatly into quarters. It’s blood-smudged, not as warm as she would have expected, considering it’s fresh off his skin, but Harlow has never run warm. She sets it on her bedside table. 

“Turn around. Hands against the wall, and don’t take them off until I tell you to.”

Harlow’s breath goes in sharp and comes out soundless, and he obeys, almost overeager, bloody hands splayed out against the drywall, back arched slightly, head bowed and tipped towards her. His soft mouth shapes a word without sound. 

“Hm?” Zinnia inquires, leaning in close, and he shudders. 

“Please,” he repeats, just loud enough to hear. Zinnia wants to bite him, god. He’s so brittle, and so sweet. Later. 

She starts by dragging her nails down his spine, hard enough to leave welts on someone more delicate, but the only sign of force she has here is watching him take a deep breath. In, out. His ribs outlined against his taut skin. Okay, not enough for him, then. Zinnia does it again, harder this time, all the force she can muster, hard enough to feel like she should be drawing blood, but all it does is make soft dark rise under his skin, briefly, like she’s looking at an eel through parchment paper. He seems to be a little calmer, at least, but his shoulders twitch, hands flexing. 

“More or less?” Zinnia asks.

“ _More,_ ” Harlow breathes. She can hear the whispering, almost subsonic undertones of him being only partially inside his body, his control over his flesh slipping so that his shadows speak along with him. Hot. 

She takes two steps away from him to open the chest at the foot of her bed. She’s got a lot of weaponry in here. Some to use on partners, some to use on enemies. Some for both. The one she takes out is a long metal pole attached to a hilt. About as heavy as her sword is, handles similarly, so it feels natural in her hand - it’s her favorite for a reason. It’s held securely inside a leather sheath - she’ll leave that on for now. Dulls the impact, and she can always take it off later. 

“This look mean enough for you?” she asks, turning back to Harlow, and pauses. He’s looking at her, face tucked into the crook of his arm, and he looks raw, ravenous. A beautiful creature, hungry and desperate. She’s going to hurt him so good he cries. She shows him the toy, and his eyes trace it, widening, before settling back on her face. 

“ _Hit_ me.”

She hits him. Not as hard as she could, not yet, but she knows this toy hits like a motherfucker, a bruising force that thuds into your lungs and feels like it reverberates under your skin. She watches Harlow discover that as well, watches his hands curl into claws against the wall as he arches, a jagged sound escaping his lips. She hit him across the shoulder blades - not something she’d usually do with this one, but she’s seen Harlow shatter all his ribs by dropping two hundred feet onto pavement and then walk it off. The mark it leaves, flushing black, looks like the nastiest kind of bruise, and it’s _gorgeous_. 

“Oh, very pretty, good boy,” she tells him, because he deserves to hear it, and his knees almost buckle with the force of his shudder. The impact of the words looks like it hit harder than the rod, and she can feel the bright, hot focus of wanting to ruin him needle at her. She presses a kiss to the fading mark across his shoulder blades, impulsively, and he makes a sound like he’s been cut. 

“Please,” he says, in three voices at once, layered over each other. A snarling demand at the same time as a meek pleading at the same time as an even request, and she doesn’t know what he’s asking for, doesn’t know if he wants her to stop being kind or to hit him more or to kiss him more. She takes a guess, steps back, and hits him again. 

The second hit makes him moan, muffled, and press his head into the wall. Zinnia rubs her thumb into the bruise, hard, and he groans as she leans around to see what he’s muffled by. He’s got his lower lip between his fangs, like she’d thought, pinpricks of black welling up from where the cutting edges are pressed into his skin, and she touches his mouth with delicate fingertips. 

“Hey. No. Don’t bite your lip while I’m hitting you or you’ll bite through it.”

He doesn’t respond, just chews on his lip a little. A drop of black beads at his lip, forming sluggishly, and she wipes it away with her thumb, smearing it. He already looks a little dazed. He sucks air in and out, his ribcage expanding to press against his skin. 

“Harlow. I mean it. Be good.”

His mouth falls open, finally, letting his abused lip slip out of his mouth, his ichor trickling a little. She dips in and kisses his bruised mouth, hard, as a reward, and she sees his hands shift, forearms tensing, as though he wants to grab onto her but knows he isn’t allowed.

“ _Good_ boy.”

As Zinnia pulls back and readies her rod to hit again, she swipes a hand across her mouth where she’d kissed him, and it comes away stained black.

“I’m going to do ten in a row,” she tells him. “I want you to count.”

“Yes,” Harlow says. His voice is rough, a little thready. Just the one voice again, he’s managed to collapse them down. She’ll see how long he can keep that up. Zinnia taps the rod lightly against his back, letting him brace himself, and then starts hitting him, heavy rhythm, keeping the momentum up by letting the rod spin up and around like she would during a sword drill, solid hit after hit. She amps up the force as she goes, hears his voice change as she goes.

“One,” and his voice is low, and then “Two,” a little louder, and then on “three” his voice cracks, splits, and “four” and “five” are choruses of discordant voices, loud, and then “six” stuns him back into a hiss. He’s leaning hard into the wall, and “seven,” comes out as a broken little moan, and “eight” is a struggle for him to force from his lips, “nine” a cry that drags roughly from his throat. 

Harlow half-sobs “ten,” and she puts the rod down, her wrist a little sore from the need to control it so precisely. His entire back is mottled black, and she probes the bruises with her fingers, prodding hard. He shifts and makes a tiny sound with every touch, but he doesn’t flinch violently like he would if she’d done any damage that was too much for him.

“You good?” she asks, checking, rubbing her hand over his back, and leans around to look at his face. His eyes are shut, his mouth still bruised and bloody. There are dark streaks on his face from tears, and her wall has some scores in it from where his claws dug in, which is… fine. He doesn’t respond to her, which is less fine. “Harlow, I need you to check in. You need to safeword?”

“ _No_ ,” he says, and it sounds like an effort. “No. Feels…. _hh_. Am I. Did I…”

She waits for the rest, but he can’t seem to say it, just turns his head away. He’s spacing hard, poor thing.

“You did good,” she says, hazarding a guess, and is vindicated when his whole body shudders, when he leans toward her. “You’ve done so good for me, you’re such a good boy. You’re so beautiful, you take it so well.”

She sees black drip off the bottom of his chin, turned away from her, watches it hit the stone tile of her floor. He’s crying, silently.

“Can I give you a little more, or are you done?” she asks, stroking his back, and he hesitates, his claws kneading at the wall. There goes a little more of her drywall. It’s fine. Worth it. 

“More,” he says, finally, but seems hesitant enough that Zinnia puts aside any plans of further blows. Instead she rakes her nails down his back again, making him hiss as she presses into his bruises. There is a distinct sense of satisfaction in seeing something that he laughed off earlier making him shudder now that he’s bruised and tender, even if she knows the bruises are going to last a maximum of fifteen minutes. Now. She’d wanted to try something, earlier, and now was the time.

“Brace yourself,” she warns, and he does, tensing as she wraps an arm tight around his waist. She sets her teeth at the nape of his neck, and feels him ripple under her as he realizes what she’s about to do, his head drop to bare his throat. It sparks some deep, instinctive satisfaction in her to see him submit to it, and she bites him _hard_ , lets her teeth grind. In response, he makes a soft, gutted sound and his knees collapse out from under him. 

Zinnia almost goes down with him, but she’s strong and sturdy and has her arm around him, so instead she slams her free hand against the wall to brace herself and holds him up by sheer force, letting them both sink down slowly until he’s curled into himself on his knees and she’s kneeling over him, teeth still in his skin, and only then does she let go. Only with her teeth, though, so she can admire the bruise and pet him. He’s shaking, full-body, and his shadows are quaking with him. Little tendrils of darkness are twining around her, holding on hard and cold and only barely substantial, and she ends up hauling Harlow half in her lap with his face shoved into her chest before they’ll stop trying to tug her closer. 

“Good, good, very well done. We’re done now. Was that what you needed, sweetheart? You doing okay?”

“Mnm,” Harlow replies, with his flesh mouth, and then something quiet, mind-bending, and unintelligible with seven shadow mouths at once. He shakes himself, and says, “ _Yes,_ ” with only two mouths, which seems to be the most sensible thing she’s going to get out of him for the foreseeable future, so she just sits and pets him for a while longer. The bruises aren’t healing as fast as she thought they would, which is worrying. 

God, if she could just move for a bit, she has an aftercare basket under the bed, but every time she shifts his shadows keen and clutch at her, so instead she just sits there and pets him and lets her legs fall asleep as he presses close into her. She’s shaking a bit too, coming down from the adrenaline of hitting him, and it’s soothing to have him breathing cold against her, but eventually the worry starts to eat at her as the bruises keep _not fading_. She has an excellent view of them. They are exactly as dark as they were when they were fresh.

“Harlow, you good? Your bruises aren’t healing.”

“I’m aware,” he says, and the shadows whisper _wanted_ and _marked_ and _claimed_ and _good boy_. 

It hurts, how hard that hits Zinnia. To have this indestructible weapon of a boy carry her bruises just because he wants them. God. _God_. She’s keeping him forever. 

“Next time I’ll bring out some sharp things and cut some designs into you, if you want,” she says, and he shivers. 

“Mm. Next time?”

“Next time,” she confirms, and feels him relax bonelessly into her. God, she wants to take care of him. She is going to hurt him so good he forgets what it felt like to hurt bad. Long-term project. For now, he’s safe and bruised and sleepy in her arms, and her only job is to hold him. So she holds him.


End file.
